You are kindly invited to the seminar entitled as \u201cThe Frontier of al-Andalus from the Perspective of the Ban\u016b Qas\u012b, 842-907: Categories and Theory\u201d organized by the Department of History.<\/p>\n
Date: 27 November 2025, Thursday
\nTime: 16.30
\nAvenue: A-130 FEASS Seminar Room<\/p>\n
Title: The Frontier of al-Andalus from the Perspective of the Ban\u016b Qas\u012b, 842-907: Categories and Theory<\/p>\n
Speaker: Jonathan Jarrett, Krea University<\/p>\n
Abstract:
\nDuring the mid-to-late-9th century CE the Umayyad emirate in the Iberian Peninsula endured a period of prolonged political breakdown. This was driven particularly by indigenous convert aristocratic kin-groups, fighting for position in a hierarchy now dominated by foreigners. A famous one of these kin-groups was the Ban\u016b Qas\u012b, or \u2018sons of Cassius\u2019, who between 842 and 907 CE were the main power in an extended frontier zone centred on Zaragoza which defended the Muslim heartlands in the Peninsula from the Christian north-east. This family have been the object of a recent in-depth study by Jes\u00fas Lorenzo Jim\u00e9nez, allowing their position in Andalus\u012b politics to be reassessed. Seizing this opportunity, this lecture will show how the Ban\u016b Qas\u012b were able to use their location at the edge of Islamically-controlled space to make themselves essential to its definition and maintenance. When loyal to C\u00f3rdoba, the Ban\u016b Qas\u012b allowed Umayyad power to be expressed as far north as the high Pyrenees; but with a single act of defiance they could switch the boundary of Umayyad control southwards by a hundred miles or more. This paper foregrounds the frontier as the tool with which they set out to achieve their aims, and uses their example to question categories of frontier in modern theorizations more widely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bio:
\nDr Jonathan Jarrett was until recently Associate Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Leeds and will soon be Associate Professor of History at Krea University. His PhD is from Birkbeck, University of London and was published as \u201cRulers and Ruled in Frontier Catalonia, 880-1010\u201d in 2010, when it was runner-up for the Royal Historical Society\u2019s Gladstone Prize. He has also taught at the Universities of London, Oxford and Birmingham and is chiefly interested in questions of power, authority and consensus, which he pursues especially in frontier zones, anywhere and in any period but especially the Christian-Muslim frontiers of the Iberian Peninsula, in which area he is also a long-term collaborator with Professor Zavagno.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You are kindly invited to the seminar entitled as \u201cThe Frontier of al-Andalus from the Perspective of the Ban\u016b Qas\u012b, 842-907: Categories and Theory\u201d organized by the Department of History. Date: 27 November 2025, Thursday Time: 16.30 Avenue: A-130 FEASS Seminar Room Title: The Frontier of al-Andalus from the Perspective [\u2026] <\/p>\n